On Nov. 9, oral argument will be presented on behalf of Mumia in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Philadelphia. The issue is the death penalty - whether Mumia will live or die. Everything rides on this.

Show your support and join us at the US Embassy on 9th November. Mobilise your friends, collleagues and family. Let your organisation, trade union, campaign or community group know and ask people not only to join us, but also to spread the word. We need the strongest possible message to reach the US authorities. Mumia is innocent - Free Mumia!

Friday, October 29, 2010

Bob Crow addresses the London anti-cuts march in London on Saturday 23 October, calling for national action against the cuts before the March 2011 demonstration to which the TUC have committed. Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! had a lively contingent on the short march.

If you want to see what arrogance mixed with contempt looks like, examine the 20 October Spending Review in detail. This is the biggest cut in government spending since the Second World War. Nevertheless, opinion polls taken immediately after the £81 billion welfare and spending cuts were announced found that six out of ten people in Britain agreed with the Coalition government that it was right to cut public spending. This is testimony to the success of the media campaign repeatedly drumming out the same message: Britain has to reduce its budget deficit. As befits a Cabinet with 20 millionaires out of 23 members, this is a deceit.

Ministers focus on current public sector borrowing and say that it had gone out of control. In fact, it has been falling: the quarterly figure for April to September 2010 saw public sector net borrowing of £73.5 billion compared with £77.4 billion for the same quarter in 2009. This decrease in government borrowing was due to a rise in tax receipts, up £20.4 billion for the same period. Total, accumulated public debt as a percentage of national income is lower today than for most of the past 200 years; since 1688 it averages 112% of national income and in September 2010 it was 57.2%; below that of France, Germany, Japan and the USA. This Spending Review is not intended to save the British economy; it is an attack on the working class by a government staffed by millionaires acting in the service of the City of London. The government would never have dared to launch such an attack if it thought that there would be serious opposition, but it reckons that the Labour Party and trade union leadership will be unwilling and unable to mount serious resistance.

On top of the £11 billion cuts in welfare spending announced in June, the government presented an additional £7 billion of welfare cuts. The details are revealing: what is one to make of a government that will remove mobility cost allowances for disabled people in residential care, confining them to their homes? Or which will limit the Employment and Support Allowance given to people who are unable to work through mental and physical disability to one year, after which they must seek work, just as the able-bodied must do? This is the refined cruelty of the British bourgeoisie. Central government funding to local government councils will be cut by 26% over four years. The Local Government Association estimates 100,000 council jobs will go; many care services will end; social services for children, the disabled and elderly will stop. Swimming pools and leisure centres will shut or be priced out of reach for many people, libraries will close, streets will go unrepaired and not cleaned, garbage collection will be cut back, parks will go untended, social centres, gathering places for young and old, will be shut. Council tax benefit is to be cut by £500 million a year and remaining funds turned into a grant given to local authorities. Each authority will be empowered to decide who is eligible for the benefit. Councils will have every incentive to deny poorer people benefits and drive them away. The result will be homelessness and ghettoes. England’s social housing budget is being cut by over half. New council and housing association tenants will be expected to pay higher rents, set at 80% of market levels. They will be given short term tenancies, rather than security of tenure that current residents have. Housing benefits are to be cut. People will be driven deeper into debt, anxiety and homelessness.

Women will be hardest hit by the cuts; 65.5% of public sector workers and 75% of the local government workforce are women. Women depend more than men on benefits, and they constitute the majority of part time workers; 90,000 women work part time in the civil service compared to just 15,000 men. Being part time they are the first in line to be sacked.

University funding will fall by 40%. If universities want to continue operating they will have to make up the money by charging fees. The fees will start at about £6,000 per annum, but that will not get you much of a degree. The further education budget is being cut by 25% by 2014-15. Courses will close; universities and colleges will be merged and the market will decide which are shut down. The number of students per lecturer will soar, unless you pay fees double or treble the average fee. Millions of young people will have their horizons pushed into the gutter. Nursery places are being cut. The state pension age for men and women is to be raised to 66 by 2020, with the prospect of it rising yet further to 68 and beyond. The Treasury said that this would save £5 billion. Rail and bus travel costs will rise steeply.

Schools and hospitals, we are told, are exempted from the cuts. They will get 0.1% more money each year in real terms. This is insufficient to meet the increasing number of school pupils and the needs of an ageing population for medical care. More of the NHS will be privatised. Hinchingbrooke hospital in Huntingdon is to become the first NHS hospital turned over to a private company, with bids already in. More treatments will be restricted to those who can pay.

International capitalism is in crisis. Capitalism has no other way out of crisis than to attack the working class. The British state will begin with the poorest, but it will move on to attack the middle classes as redundancies accelerate later next year. The living standards of millions of people in Britain and around the world are being sacrificed to maintain the global position of the City, its banks, insurance companies and brokerage houses; usurers and parasites. The government says it will impose a bank levy to raise £2.5 billion by 2013. These giant monopolies will simply pass any extra costs on to customers in higher charges.

This Spending Review takes place amidst growing tensions between countries as currency wars threaten to turn into trade wars. The government says that the private sector will compensate for the reduction in the public sector and so ensure growth. This is a lie. The government estimates half a million thrown out of work by its cuts. This is another lie; towns and cities will be devastated at the stroke of the Chancellor’s pen. Already, in Middlesbrough 40% of people are officially workless, and of those in work 43% work for the public sector. Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham – a whole swathe of cities across the north are facing mass unemployment. The ruling class and its media will try to confuse and divide us, but the reality of the attack and the suffering it causes will not be concealed. Millions of people in Britain must join the fight back and fight for socialism. If they do not, we are destined to re-run the disaster of the Great Depression of the 1930s and its culmination, World War.

With the deepening of the general crisis of imperialism, a number of imperialist countries have been the scene of major attacks directed against the rebellions that challenged the gains of the working class. What happened in recent months England or in France are examples.

These imperialist attacks also affected other peoples through plans and policies aimed at the division of the world. Now, in this context people have, too, they say. This is illustrated by the outbreak of the People's War in Nepal, Peru, Philippines, and India ... and even if in the latter country the People's War is experiencing a wave of encirclement and attempted annihilation led by the reactionary regime of India and supported by the imperialists.

In our country, facing the sharpening of class struggle, attacks against the reactionary regime Moroccan life of the masses takes the form of multiple plans affecting the privatization of all the vital sectors of the country (emergency plan ... ) and the accompanying laws (law on political parties, the right to strike, press, law against so-called anti-terrorist ..) are, in turn, further reduce political and union freedoms.

This is illustrated by the recent crackdown on popular struggles that took place in villages and Ikli Ourika where houses were destroyed without any compensation to residents.

As the student movement, it is undoubtedly a dynamic part of the mass movement. This is demonstrated by the many struggles initiated against the "Emergency Plan triennial (especially in Marrakech, Agadir, Fez, Kenitra, Tangiers ...) , and where the student movement will give its best activists, imprisoned for defending the right to free education for the son and daughters of the people.

Just since 2008, arrests are dozens, forcing the student movement to unify its struggles against the attacks of the reactionary regime. This dynamic unit ended with the "project unit the student movement" proposed during the days of martyrdom Abderrazak Elkadiri, which took place in Marrakech. Now, at the forefront of student struggles, the bastion of Marrakech to experience this year an unprecedented attack. The campus was surrounded the first week of the academic year, surveillance, prosecution and other abductions of activists are almost daily.

The arrest of 10 students last Saturday after the surprise intervention of repressive forces in the campus will leads to their torture overnight before being released.

The abduction by the DST Comrade Youssef el Hamdia home represents a further step in the escalation of repression. Indeed, the security services (DST) encircle his home and threatening his parents to their guns before the arrest and imprison him.

The same methods were used in the abduction of Comrade Ilhem Hassnouni Tuesday, October 12, 2010 in the town of Souira. This comrade was sought for participation in the struggles of April 24 and 14 and May 15, 2008 and was expelled from the university where she was enrolled in Masters Degree..

In reality, these kidnappings and these arrests represent another milestone in the global attack against the education sector. In particular, they constitute a frontal attack against the initiators of the "project unit the student movement" and against the progress experienced by the militant stronghold of Marrakech in his unwavering defense of the right to free education, and through this the unity of the movement and the struggle for popular education and science.

Ultimately, this situation dictates to the student movement activists to prepare for new attacks and force them to intensify the fight against the "three-year emergency plan".

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Arundhati Roy, writer, began her speech by asking those who wanted to throw shoes to her to do so now. She said that about a week or ten days ago at a tribunal in Ranchi on Operation Green Hunt, a TV journalist asked her whether Kashmir was an integral part of India. Her reply was that it has never been an integral part of India and the Indian government recognised it as a disputed territory and took it to the UN on its own accord. In 1947 we were told that India became a sovereign democracy. But it became a country as per the imagination of its colonizer, and continued to be a colonizer even after the British left the country. Indian state forcibly or deceitfully annexed the North-East, Goa, Junagarh, Telangana, etc. The government accuses the Naxalites of waging a protracted war against the state. But the truth is, it is the Indian state which has waged a protracted war against the people which it calls its own. Who are the people it has waged war against? The people of North-East, Kashmir, Punjab, etc. This is an upper caste Hindu state waging a continuing struggle against the people.

Arundhati narrated her experience of Kashmir during the days of the Amaranth land issue in 2008, Kashmir needs azadi from India as much as India needs azadi from Kashmir. By India needs Azadi what she meant was the people of India for whose liberation the freedom of the Kashmiri people was a must. Any of us who have visited Kashmir know how militarized it is. Every time there is an election, the government asks as to why a referendum is needed, since the people of Kashmir have voted, and they have voted for India. She further brought to the notice of the audience that a convention of this kind was historic in the capital city of this hollow superpower that is India. It is also important to know where one stands on this issue. The British colonial empire too once considered Indians to be unfit for self-rule. The same argument is being used today by the powers-that-be to deny azadi to Kashmir. It is the same Indian ruling class which once preached non-alignment, but is now bowing before US imperialism and the MNCs. We need to continue this exercise of debate, and at the same time be aware that we are up against a serious adversary. We must realize that the bows and arrows in the hands of the adivasis or stones of the Kashmiris alone are not enough. We need to make serious and meaningful alliances. There has to be an alliance between all the struggling people and what will connect them will be the idea of justice. We need to be aware of the fact that not every movement or slogan is for justice.

Arundhati wished that the people fighting for azadi in Kashmir will not be let down by their leaders. She urged that those who are fighting for a just society must align with all the struggles of the powerless and the oppressed. Kashmiri people have an experience of over 60 years of struggle, but cautioned against isolation from other oppressed people. She extended her support for the struggle for azadi, but also appealed for a debate on the meaning of azadi among the Kashmiris. She asked everyone in Kashmir to have a deep discussion on what they are fighting for. And it has to come from within the Kashmiris and not from the so-called critics of azadi as a divisive ploy of the enemy. On the question of Kashmiri pundits, she said that much of the stories of atrocities on pundits have been concocted to sow misunderstanding and distrust among people, though what happened to some of them is tragic and unfortunate. Justice is to be fought and upheld for everybody, whether a minority of religion, caste, or nationality. It is not enough to ask for justice if the next person does not have it. People in Kashmir have said that Kashmiri pundits are welcome back, and this is a commendable gesture.

Arundhati concluded by saluting the struggle of the young people, women, children who are out on the streets facing the brutal Indian army. The first great art which the Indian state has mastered is to wait and wait and hope that people’s energies will go down. Killing them is the next. It is up to the people of Kashmir to take their struggle further in solidarity with other people’s movements. At the same time, the people in Nagaland must reflect on themselves why is it that a Naga Battalion is sent to kill people in Kashmir and Chhattisgarh. A direct confrontation with the state is not enough. It is necessary to know ones enemy and make alliances locally, as well as internationally

I write this from Srinagar, Kashmir. This morning’s papers say that I may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir. I said what millions of people here say every day. I said what I, as well as other commentators have written and said for years. Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice. I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world; for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland; for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves I visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore; for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in the terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I traveled to Shopian, the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer, the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their homes and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice. I met Shakeel, who is Nilofer’s husband and Asiya’s brother. We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get ‘insaf’—justice—from India, and now believed that Azadi—freedom— was their only hope. I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes. I traveled with a young man who told me how three of his friends, teenagers in Anantnag district, had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving ‘hate-speeches’, of wanting India to break up. On the contrary, what I say comes from love and pride. It comes from not wanting people to be killed, raped, imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians. It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one. Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds. Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice, while communal killers, mass murderers, corporate scamsters, looters, rapists, and those who prey on the poorest of the poor, roam free.

This Report contains a speech of Arundhati Roy on Kashmir amongst others

The convention on Kashmir that was held on the 21 October 2010 proved to be historic in every aspect given the topicality of the issue. As can be noticed from the title of the convention itself we at the CRPP thought it necessary to pose the question directly, as the people of Kashmir, in their persistent struggle for their right to self-determination braving the repressive apparatus of the Indian State had dared even in their death.

When people are being killed in hundreds; maimed, tortured, raped and put behind bars in thousands; it is of utmost significance as a responsible body which gives paramount importance to right to life, liberty and equality, right to freedom of speech and movement and last but not the least the fundamental right to raise one’s voice and resist all forms of oppression and exploitation, it was of necessity to stand up for the fundamental right of the people of Jammu &Kashmir—their inalienable right to determine their own future, their Right to Self Determination. What better way can one make oneself democratic than to be in solidarity with the genuine urge of a people in their relentless struggle for their inalienable Right to Self-Determination. It is this conviction that has given us the strength to organize this convention. And we are confident that this convention would go a long way in the hearts and minds of all freedom loving people—who cherish the word justice—as a definite step in forging the solidarities of all who have been mistreated, discriminated, oppressed and exploited.

The following is a summary of the proceeding of the convention.

S A R Geelani, the Working President of the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners (CRPP) conducted and initiated the proceedings of the Convention on Kashmir titled ‘Azadi: The Only Way’, at the LTG Auditorium, New Delhi on 21 October 2010 by welcoming the chief guest, the speakers and the audience on behalf of CRPP. He recalled that in just the past four months, more than 100 people -mostly teenagers- have been martyred in Kashmir. He recounted how a small boy was brutally beaten to death by the CRPF, which was just one example of the untold atrocities and oppression committed by the occupation forces of India. Thousands have been injured, many have been blinded, raped, maimed and yet many are languishing in prison.

He took specific note of the shameful role of the Indian media for its motivated reportage conflating fiction with facts, turning truth upside down. The Indian establishment had successfully misled the people of the country for the last 63 years when it came to the hard facts about Kashmir. In this context CRPP felt that the voice of the Kashmiris needs to come out. The exercise of extreme forms of repression by the government has not just been over the past four months but for decades. He also hoped that the Kashmiri people’s demand for azadi, which has been attacked from many quarters as vague and undefined, will be clarified today, and what the Kashmiris mean when they call for azadi will be spelt out. He wondered about the total lack of political will of the Indian Parliament in taking a decision on the future of Kashmir as per the wishes of the Kashmiris. Nehru once held that the Indian Parliament had no right to take any decision on the future of Kashmir. Kashmir belongs to Kashmiris, and they will take decision. This was why the Kashmir dispute was referred to the UN. But the same Parliament passed a resolution in 1994 without any opposition which says that Kashmir is an integral part of India. This is the nature of the hypocrisy of the Indian ruling classes when it comes to Kashmir. He pointed out that when we talk of Kashmir, we do not mean the Valley of Kashmir alone, but the entire Jammu and Kashmir as in 1947. It includes Muzzaffarabad, Mirpur, Jammu, and Ladakh. When we say India oppresses us, we talk of the Indian state, and not its people. But we have to say this to the Indian people that when our people are killed, it is done in the name of the people of India. Indian people have to make it known that they are not a part of this oppression, and they stand opposed to it.

He then invited the chief guest Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Chairperson of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference, along with other speakers of the day to the dais. Two minutes of silence in honour of the martyrs of Kashmir was observed.

Zhao Dong-min is a lawyer and a member of the Communist Party of China. Before his arrest in August 2009 he worked for many years providing legal services to many workers to resolve issues such as unpaid pensions and loss of other benefits. Zhao also served as the temporary coordinator of the Mao Zedong Thought Study Group in Xian, Shaanxi until his arrest. For more background on his case, see:

Declaration of the Concerned Group of 108 Veterans of the original 68th Unit and the 23rd Unit of the People's Liberation Army in Da-an City, Jilin Province on matters related to Zhao Dong-min

Any Chinese person who has a conscience and stands for justice knows that what has happened to Zhao Dong-min has gone beyond a single incident. It has become something of political significance in today's China. It has become a test case for us to tell whether the Chinese Communist Party is a real Marxist-Leninist Party or a fake one, whether the government is a real people's government or a fake one, whether the Communists are real ones or fake ones, and whether or not those in the government are actually serving the people.

How this case will be handled will be the turning point to determine whether the Chinese Communist Party understands that it has been on the wrong path and returns to the people, or it continues to cheat, manipulate, oppress people, and to continuingly add more suffering to people, following the road to be the enemy of the people, and collaborating with the imperialist powers in their evil deeds. This is a life and death struggle between the two classes, the proletarian class and the bureaucratic class; the two different positions; and the two different futures.

Everyone knows that the proletarian class is the master of our country and it is the leading class. The Chinese Communist Party is the vanguard of the proletarian class and its true representative. The Chinese Communist Party must be loyal to the proletarian class and it must serve the proletarian class and to protect their legal rights and benefits. The Constitution of China has given the proletarian class its supreme power and status. The protection of our Constitution is the ultimate obligation of the proletarian class, the Party and the government.

However, when lawyer Zhao Dong-min, the proud son of our proletarian class, worked to protect the rights and benefits of the workers, the bureaucratic class and its police and legal authority joined together to oppress him. Zhao was arrested and detained until today. The legal system is supposed to protect workers but it turned around and became the agent of killing the legal rights of the workers, and it also suppressed people's legal rights to appeal.

We have to ask: Is today's Chinese Community Party still the vanguard of the proletariat? Is today's government still the people's government? Is the proletarian class still the master of our country? Why did the Communist Party oppress the workers' representative? Where on earth is this kind of reasoning coming from?

Zhao Dong-min is a fine legal worker. He is very self-disciplined and demands a great deal of himself in carrying out his duties. He has followed the Constitution, the Party Charter, and the union laws in his work to protect the workers. He has worked extremely hard and his work has steadily and effectively protected the rights of the workers. Zhao Dong-min is a loyal representative and reliable friend of workers.

We can say this: Zhao Dong-min's work in protecting the legal rights of workers has made great contributions toward the stability of our society. He has been a good cadre of the Party, a good helper of our government, and a good representative of our workers. He is a rare fighter in the struggle on the legal front. He is indeed the pride of our nation.

However, such a good comrade has been arrested and detained longer than the legal limit allows and was put in the prison of his own Party and of his own government. Zhao Dong-min has suffered this unprecedented attack. His arrest was a fatal blow to his wife and it was too much for her to bear, so while he was still in prison she died with deep regret. Zhao's young son is now without his father or his mother and fell ill. How could all of these injustices have not enraged many people and caused the concern of the whole society and the whole nation!

We are 108 veterans of the original 68th unit and the 23rd unit of the People's Liberation Army. We strongly condemn the legal authority of Xian City, Shaanxi province in their action to illegally detain and to illegally charge Zhao Dong-min. We firmly support Zhao Dong-min. We are old soldiers who joined the army in the 1970s. From the time we were young we were educated and deeply influenced by the teachings of Mao Zedong Thought. Our love for our country and for our people has deeply settled in our bones.

After the Reform we have suffered a great deal and we have been in very difficult situations. We lost our jobs and often we had no place to go. The factories where we worked were sold cheaply to new owners and we lost our legal rights and benefits. Our fate is the same as the fate of the vast majority of the workers, therefore, we especially sympathize and especially are concerned with what will happen to the extraordinary legal worker who protected workers' legal rights - Comrade Zhao Dong-min

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Is Britain waking up to the severity of the current cuts from this neo- liberal coalition and the need for Democracy and Class Struggle ?

While we never rely on the TUC the current call for a national demonstration is correct but why wait until March 2011 ?

Democracy and Class Struggle calls for a more urgent response to bring forward this national demonstration and calls for mass local demonstrations against the cuts.

Let us emulate our class brothers and sisters in France and Italy and wage class war against those who have been declaring war on us - the fightback begins wherever you are.

Report on TUC Proposal.

Brendan Barber has announced that the date of the TUC national demonstration against the cuts will be in Hyde Park in the Spring, on Saturday 26 March 2011.

Addressing the Greater London Association of Trades Councils' 150th Celebration Conference at Congress House, Brendan Barber said that the unions are now at the heart of a powerful, progressive coalition against the cuts, bringing together service users, charities and community groups.

Brendan Barber said: 'The union movement and the country face the sternest test in a generation. Not only is the economy on its knees, not only is the law tilted against us, but we have a government in power that is making spending cuts of a speed, scale and savagery never before seen.

'On Wednesday we saw half a million public servants condemned to life on the dole, higher education funding cut by 40 per cent, the education maintenance allowance for 16-19 year olds scrapped and local authorities compelled to slash services for the vulnerable.

'The spending review also dealt council housing a devastating blow, forced tenants to pay sky high rents, cut £350 million from legal aid, and hiked train fares well above inflation.

'As if all that wasn't bad enough, our welfare state is about to be ripped apart as a colossal £18 billion of cuts take hold. Universal child benefit axed, with 1.5 million children losing out, employment support allowance time limited for many, working tax credit frozen, childcare support for low-income families slashed, the value of pensions trimmed year on year and people having to work longer in return for less.

'And the bankers who caused this mess will not be affected at all because the pathetically small banking levy will leave them popping the champagne corks right across the square mile.

'The impact of this brutal, ideological and cripplingly unfair austerity will be truly devastating. Not just on the services that millions rely on nor on the lives and livelihoods of so many dedicated public servants, but on the very glue that holds our complex, diverse and multicultural society together.

'Make no mistake, when these unprecedented cuts go ahead, Britain will emerge a very different place. Less civilised, less tolerant, less equal and a country where those with privilege and wealth will get by just fine - as they always do.

'It will be a country where everyone else struggles to get by, stripped of opportunity, hope and dignity by a government which does not care, in an economy that won't be able to pay.

'We know from bitter experience who will be in the firing line. It will be the working-class communities marginalised by the decline of social mobility, the women who disproportionately use and provide our key public services and the black people who continue to get such a raw deal in our society. So too will it be the young people who suffered so grievously during the recession and the OAPs who depend on the care homes, meals on wheels and support services now being quietly slashed across Britain.

'When this government tells us we're all in this together, that austerity is in the national interest and that these cuts are fair, let us expose this for the insulting, misleading claptrap that it is.

'When huge cuts take place, those at the very bottom pay the heaviest price. That's what a new TUC study has discovered, showing that the bottom 10 per cent will be hit 15 times harder by the spending review than the top 10 per cent. When spending is slashed, inequality widens and the poor get poorer. That's what the OECD found when it investigated Sweden's and Canada's cuts in the 1990s.

'The measures that the government has announced are clearly regressive. That's what the independent, respected Institute for Fiscal Studies said about the emergency budget in June and about the spending review last week. The evidence is overwhelming and it is indisputable, these savage cuts will devastate the poorest, the most disadvantaged and the most vulnerable.

'This is simply not acceptable. It's up to all of us who believe in a decent, compassionate, civilised society not just to speak out against the cuts, but to fight for our public services and the values they represent. That's why the TUC launched the All Together for Public Services campaign at Congress.

'So now we'll be taking our message to ordinary men and women, encouraging them to get involved in our campaign against the cuts. On Tuesday, the TUC held a successful rally and lobby of parliament, bringing together unions and organisations such as Crisis and the Child Poverty Action Group.

'On Wednesday, to coincide with the spending review, unions held protests from Plymouth in the south to Newcastle in the north. Today, demonstrations are taking place in Cambridge, Bristol, Sheffield, Birmingham, Belfast, Edinburgh, Lincoln and London.

'So let's start campaigning and mobilising for our national demonstration against the cuts next Spring in London's Hyde Park on Saturday 26 March. Together let's make that mobilisation the biggest, boldest and best event in our history

LONG LIVE THE STRUGGLE OF THE PEOPLE AND PROLETARIAT AGAINST THE REACTION AND MEDIATORS!

THE FIGHT AGAINST REFORM OF REACTIONARY BOURGEOISIE

The movement against pension reform has spread throughout society. We were able to observe and participate in several exciting initiatives in their mode of organization and militancy, although it is not a revolutionary movement. Missing words of a political, a powerful revolutionary organization. Its construction and the Revolutionary United Front develops and enriches the practice of the masses and the class struggle. When the masses take control of the theory they transform it into a material force.

Forces constrain the movement to keep things as is. For new forms of struggle hatch, creating their own tools and organizations, an intense struggle is developing between the old and new methods. This is the dialectical movement.

The most interesting initiatives or less correspond to our order: "Against Capitalism and conciliators! Go blow for blow!

Unite at the base! .

Gatherings of local initiatives interpros, basically combining union and non-unionized develop. These assemblies decide actions punch: blockages of industrial zones, commercial stations, key intersections, etc.. But nothing is automatic. We need activists to lead the revolutionary struggle so that they become revolutionary assemblies needed.

The influx of college students in the movement made him take another step. The student movement is characterized by its aggressiveness. In many cities, the demonstrations were schoolgirls 'wild' and did not supervise the police left and reformist organizations schoolgirls. These demonstrations "savages" are really afraid to power. Evidenced by the repression that the students had to face (more than 1,000 arrests since the beginning of the movement).

In these events, contradictions arise between the reformists who want to control everything, and radicals.

The violence of the students is their response against the repressive forces of the state who take over-equipped to shoot straight and have already killed at least two serious injuries (and probably more since yesterday, 19 October). Youth protest against the planned retirement, because it is concerned with its future very bleak. The rate of youth unemployment reached 50% in some cities. Officially it is 20% nationally. The current generation is more precarious than their parents. It is legitimate for Pupils, students, young workers, unemployed and precarious to mobilize and go really!

Mobilization gradually spreading to the entire country and aims, as in 1936 or 1968, to paralyze the country to bend the government. Several industrial and commercial areas are blocked, the railroad tracks occupied, roads blocked by barricades. Strikes at refineries seem to stand firm and most remain blocked fuel depots. The arrival of the road in the dance results in a more effective blocking. These modes of action are developed and are crucial to bend the government on pension reform, which is a first step. Still no political demands accompanying these actions for lack of a consistent political strategy to end capitalism. For that a sufficiently powerful Party and United Front should develop.

In conclusion, many workers, students, students are highly motivated in this fight. Basically, many are those who rally for reasons that go beyond the pension reform. The fight to end the bourgeoisie and its state but also against the conciliators in our own ranks, in both parties revisionist, reformist, opportunistic, needs to consolidate and continue. On the ground, the working class, the proletariat, youth and popular within the progressive people learn to distinguish who are the false friends of the people.

French truck drivers staged go-slow operations on highways, trains were cancelled and gas stations ran out of fuel yesterday as strikers dug in ahead of a key government vote this week on an unpopular pension overhaul.

Riot police used tear gas and rubber pellet guns in the Paris suburb of Nanterre to break up a crowd of youths who set fire to cars near an anti-reform protest by secondary school students. They intervened for similar reasons in the city of Lyon.

The interior ministry said police arrested 290 rioters in various towns

Wider strikes will hit everything from air travel to mail today when unions opposed to President Nicolas Sarkozy's plan to raise the retirement age to 62 from 60 have called for another street protest.

French riot policemen use flash-ball to disperse high school students during a demonstration in Lyon on Oct. 15, 2010 during a fourth day of a nationwide protest against pension reform. The widening protests have become the biggest challenge facing President Nicolas Sarkozy, who is struggling with low popularity ratings as he tries to appease financial markets

Monday, October 18, 2010

"We have to continue this battle and to continue it we need to start planning a general strike," Maurizio Landini, head of the FIOM-CGIL metal workers union, told the flag-waving crowd in a square in central Rome.

Many revolutionary and communist parties and organizations sent messages of support to the demonstrators and to FIOM. Such messages of support helped to fight the rightist trend within the FIOM itself, to reduce the demonstration to a trade unionist mobilization, to deprive if it of its political significance, the rightist trend that has been defeated on Sunday by the masses asking for another society, where everyone has a job, a dignified life, without production of pollution, for an Italy no more involved in wars as it is in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

We enclose the messages we received in the following pages.
With communist greetings,

The CARC Party

International Solidarity messages to FIOM demonstration on 16th October in Italy

We convey our military greetings to you on your event and demonstrations on 16 October 2010 in Italy. We support the workers and people demonstrations against inhuman and exploitive capitalist systme as well as support your all demands.
War and occupation is another criminal face of capitalism which victimize the workers in occupied and under war countries and the workers in imperialist countries. So, solidarity and unity between workers and the oppressed is very important to challenge the attacks of imperialism and capitalists worldwide and defend our rights.

In solidarity
Left Radical of Afghanistan LRA
Afghanistan

Dear Comrades

Warmest and fraternal greetings. "The Pan Afrikan Voice" reflect a Marxist -Leninist-Maoist view of the world) expresses its unconditional and revolutionary solidarity with the struggling masses led by the Italian proletariat and your organization as the leading force. The Italian workers are in the vanguard in resisting the attempt by the forces of monopoly Capital to shift the burden of the financial and economic crisis on the back of the masses . With proletarian firmness we are convinced that the workers will be victorious once they stay united. This global crisis has once again place on the agenda the question of revolutionary transformation from the system capital/imperialism tom them system of socialism. We are convinced that the worker will be successful in their fight against the bosses class . Once again long live the international workers solidarity.

Workers and oppressed peoples of the world unite.

Fraternally

Comrade Tongogara

Dear comrades

On behalf of the Palestinian people and myself I fully support your 16th October demonstration in protest to capitalist exploitation to all workers in the world, besides its terror against the Palestinian people by supporting the fascist Netanyahu Zionist government.

We send you our solidarity fraternal greetings from all our people who are under the unjust siege of Gaza and our people in the Palestinian West Bank and the Palestinian refugees in Diaspora.

Lets unite to face the imperialists specially the US and the western circles who are turning the globe as a farm to their interests.

Solidarity and greetings from Democracy and Class Struggle -long live the struggle of the Italian working class for socialist renewal and Marxism Leniinism Maoism

Nickglais

Revolutionary Greetings from Manipur (India)

Dear Comrades,

I am taking liberty of sending gratitude to the comrades supporting the 16 October 2010 demonstration by sending our solidarity messages.
This is the rights time to unite all the worker of the world to fight capitalism. Only a global social revolution can prevent the imperialist bourgeoisies forcing humanity backwards. Only the working class can reorganise society so that humanity can overcome misery, unemployment, poverty, hunger, war, oppression, racism and climate disaster. Only the working class can reorganise production and distribution in a way that brings development for the two thirds of humanity whose most basic needs are not met and can move forward to the abolition of all classes, of all forms of oppression and exploitation, to a world of freedom – to communism. Today, three billion people, almost half the world’s population, live on less than two and a half dollars a day. Well over a billion people are living in absolute poverty. 2.6 billion people lack basic sanitation and 1.6 billion live without electricity. Every day, 25,000 children die due to poverty. Almost one billion people cannot read or write. In the post 2008 crisis alone, tens of millions of jobs have been lost. Even in the richest country in the world, the United States, 50 million people had difficulty feeding themselves and their children in 2008. To throw millions out of work when so much needs to be done to give the majority of humanity the most basic conditions for a decent life; this alone should condemn capitalism to the rubbish bin of history. At the same time, the capitalists use inflation and deflation, the inevitable products of their blind system of profit, to slash the real wages, or wipe out the jobs, of workers.

On the other hand the tremendous amounts of money spent by the imperialist and capitalist on their war machines are testimony to their aggressive nature. Now they claim to act in humanitarian interests, but this is camouflage for their real goal, to continue their military domination. In poorer nations, disproportionate amounts of money are spent on the army, in countries like Pakistan and Turkey it is used because the military seeks to play a political role itself, backed up by the use of arms. In India, The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958) a colonial act has been imposed at North East India including Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir. The massive military repression has been taken up at Maoist area, North East India and Jammu and Kashmir. It result gross human rights violation to the regions.

The Great Capitalist Crisis is a time of intense class warfare. Everywhere the exploiters are trying to make the workers, the poor peasants, the suffering masses pay the price of their crisis. So this is the time to unite the workers of the world against capitalist policy.
The Manipur Forward Youth Front (MAFYF) might not be able to present at the protest but we support the October 16 protest which is going to be held at Rome.

The demonstration promoted by the Italian Federation of the Metal Workers: a first step on the road towards establishing a popular emergency government, the People’s Bloc Government!

There were messages by revolutionary and communist parties and organizations from abroad supporting the demonstration.

The demonstration promoted by FIOM in Rome on 16th October has been a very important political event. It has been the first step by the popular masses on the road by which the Popular and Workers Organizations will establish a popular emergency government, the People’s Bloc Government, able to remedy immediately the hardest effects of the economical crisis and of the environmental crisis, that is to implement time to time and case-specific concrete and particular measures to comply with the following six general measures:
1. To assign productive tasks to each company (of goods or services) that are useful and suitable to his nature, according to a national plan (no company should be closed).
2. To distribute products to families and individuals, to companies and to collective uses according to clear, universally known and democratically decided plans and criteria.
3. To assign to each individual a social useful work and to grant him, in exchange for its strict implementation, the necessary conditions for a dignified life and participation in the management of the society (no worker should be fired, no individual should be marginalized).
4. To eliminate unnecessary activities and products that are harmful to human beings or the environment, assigning other tasks to the companies.
5. To start the reorganization of other social relations in accordance with the new productive base and the new distribution system.
6. To establish relations of collaboration and exchange with other countries willing to establish them with us.

This government will put the country again on the way of progress until it will go finally out of the crisis that destroys and upsets it and the entire world. It will be a government in which the popular masses will regain the trust to be able to rule the country and to transform the world and, strengthened by this trust, to move towards the socialist revolution.

The following are the title and the introduction to the Statement 24/10 released by the Central Committee of the (new) Italian Communist Party on 17th October after the demonstration of Rome:

On Saturday, the masses did the first step of the road that will lead the Workers Organizations and the Popular Organizations to establish a popular emergency government, the People's Bloc Government!

It is only the beginning of a road still uphill, but possible: it is the most direct, least destructive and least painful way to put an immediate remedy to the most disastrous effects of the economic and environmental crises and pave the way for the renaissance of our country until to finally get out of this crises that disrupts and destroys our country and the world!

Up to now, the establishment of the People's Bloc Government (PBG) was the slogan launched by the caravan of the (new) Italian Communist Party. It was the line that (n) PCI has shown and illustrated in a hundred ways and from various aspects, such as the way that the popular masses and the workers firstly had to take and go along to end the crisis: a crisis that never ends by itself thanks to the effect of the destruction it provokes as it happens to the cyclical crises, nor can it end mainly thanks to economic measures taken by the bourgeoisie in the context of their current system of social relations and of the current system of international relations.

With the demonstration in Rome on Saturday, the line of the PBG is no more only the line indicated by the Communist Party. For the first time the popular masses took hold of it, in a major mass initiative. On Saturday, the line of PBG went into battle on its legs, with the feelings and the will of hundreds of thousands of workers, workers of most different sectors, women, youth, immigrants, intellectuals. This was the real soul of a big demonstration called by the FIOM with the endorsement of thousands of Workers Organizations and Popular Organizations. It would be a demonstration with no future without that line, because the aspirations of the hundreds of thousands of protesters can only be achieved constituting the PBG. And FIOM can remain faithful to the role it played with the big mobilization on Saturday, only putting with greater awareness and determination at the head of the movement of Workers and Popular Organizations for the establishment of their emergency government, the PBG. This is true also for the thousands of promoters of the mobilization. (…)

Many revolutionary and communist parties and organizations sent messages of support to the demonstrators and to FIOM. Such messages of support helped to fight the rightist trend within the FIOM itself, to reduce the demonstration to a trade unionist mobilization, to deprive if it of its political significance, the rightist trend that has been defeated on Sunday by the masses asking for another society, where everyone has a job, a dignified life, without production of pollution, for an Italy no more involved in wars as it is in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

We enclose the messages we received in the following pages.
With communist greetings,

"We have to continue this battle and to continue it we need to start planning a general strike," Maurizio Landini, head of the FIOM-CGIL metal workers union, told the flag-waving crowd in a square in central Rome.

Protesters at the FIOM-CGIL rally shouted: "Strike! Strike! Strike!"

FIOM-CGIL estimated the turnout at "around one million," the head of the union's central committee, Giorgio Cremaschi, told reporters.

"We have a government that only cares about public finances," Guglielmo Epifani, leader of the leftist CGIL union, said at the rally, listing the construction and auto sectors as some of the worst affected in Italy.

"They are taking advantage of the crisis in order to weaken labour rights," he said, adding: "The social situation is very tough. The country is going downhill, it can't recover like it should. Unemployment is rising.

"We have to fight together. We need a plan for a new country," he added.

Epifani said that a general strike could be called after another protest on November 27 unless the government took action to address workers' concerns.

There were two separate marches through the centre of the Italian capital that both ended in Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano square for the rally.

Many protesters carried red flags and wore red shirts and helmets, with some holding up placards against Berlusconi and Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Condemn the Illegal detention of Democratic Activists in PunjabRaising Voice Against Government’s War (Operation Green Hunt) on Adivasis is a Democratic Right of the People

Press Statement

Gurmeet Singh Juj, a Punjabi writer and cultural activist of All India League for Revolutionary Culture, AILRC and a State Committee member of 'Democratic Front Against Operation Green Hunt, Punjab', and three other persons Harbans Singh, Satish and Raju (all are progressive social activists) were taken into police custody in Ferozepur on 11.10.2010. The police did not inform anyone, about the case or FIR under which they has been arrested or where they have been kept during detention.

After a lot of running around finally Gurmeet Singh’s wife and friends were able to find out that he was being detained in the CIA Staff Police Station. Some police officials told them that he is to be interrogated by the Central Govt's Intelligence Bureau & Punjab CID officials from Chandigarh about his political views and his activities against Operation Green Hunt. This is clearly another assault on the democratic movement and extension of Operation Green Hunt to the urban areas. The arrests need to be strongly condemned. It is also an attempt to terrorize the intellectuals, to keep them away from supporting the struggles of the people against neo-liberal policies of the rulers.

The Punjab police have arrested these activists with a view to disturb a convention against Operation Green Hunt scheduled for the next week in Jalandhar. The police may torture Gurmeet Singh Juj and implicate him in some false cases. All the democratic and progressive forces should raise voice against these illegal arrests.

We from the Forum Against War on People, Delhi strongly condemn the arrest of the cultural activists who have been consistently raising their democratic voice against the military operation on the people of Central and Eastern India code named Operation Green Hunt with a view to hand over people’s land and mineral resources to the big corporate houses. We demand that the arrested activists should be released immediately and unconditionally, and no false cases should be foisted on them.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Kabir Suman, popularly known as the Bob Dylan of West Bengal, has been one of the strongest voices against the Indian government's crackdown on anyone who speaks up. If poverty and malnutrition disturbs you, and you voice your discontent loudly, the govt. terms you a Maoist. Speak up against the millions of tribals whose houses are burnt or women are gangraped - because those tribals wouldn't let the corporates grab their only possession, their land - then the govt. calls you a Maoist.

And so was Maoist leader Azad killed. In this video, Kabir Suman sings out the irony of lies floated by the govt., with regards to Azad's "encounter" death. Really, how many more encounters will it take before we realise what a farce democracy, what a rotten government, and most importantly, what a silent voyeuristic populace we are?

Please download the song before it is deleted from this site by a paranoid govt. This home-made video is not of the best quality, but those of you who would want a better quality audio (mp3 format) of this song, write to me at aa.priyanka@gmail.com

Raipur, Oct 5 (IANS) Police arrested 15 people in Chhattisgarh's Dhamtari district Tuesday, saying they were village-level cadres of the banned Communist Party of India- Maoist (CPI-Maoist) and had been involved in a few attacks on police and civilians.

The arrested Maoists were not senior cadres but they had provided some logistic support to the CPI-Maoist for carrying out attacks in the district in recent years included a deadly ambush in 2009. We were tracking the youths for a long time to apprehend them,' officials at the police headquarters here told IANS.

Chhattisgarh is wracked by Maoist insurgency since the 1980s with its Bastar region - comprising the Dantewada, Bijapur, Narayanpur, Bastar and Kanker districts - considered the nerve centre of the left-wing rebels in India.

Two senior cadres of the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) were Thursday arrested in the restive Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, police said. "The two youths in their late 20s were active in Bastar district for years. They had been involved in a few attacks in the past two years," Superintendent of Police P. Sundarraj told IANS over phone.

"We were tracking them for the past three months and finally apprehended them," he added.

The arrests were made from Lohandiguda area, some 45 km from Jagdalpur town, the headquarters of the sprawling Bastar region that is spread in about 40,000 sq km and is considered the nerve centre of Maoists since late 1980s.

RAIPUR: Maoist rebels in central India have released four policemen kidnapped 12 days ago in the insurgent stronghold of Chhattisgarh state, officials said on Friday.

The four officers, who were captured on September 19 in a forest about 525 kilometres south of state capital Raipur, have returned to a station in Dantewada district, local police official SRP Kalluri told AFP. “All the four police personnel were released on Thursday night,” Kalluri said. The four policemen told reporters that they were not tortured, but they were tied up with ropes and were moved between several locations in the heavily forested area where they were seized. They said they feared for their lives, however, after three of their colleagues who were captured at the same time were shot dead by the rebels on September 21.

A Maoist leader in the area, Varvara Rao, told local television channels that the men had been released in response to appeals from family members, officials and non-government organisations. “Now the government should consider the demands forwarded by the Maoists, including the withdrawal of paramilitary forces from the forestry area of Chhattisgarh,” Rao said. The rebels have fought for decades against state and central government rule, drawing support from tribal groups and landless farmers left behind by India’s rapid economic expansion.